Panasonic announces $1,300 Blu-ray Player, to intro matching Receiver and Speaker System shortly
On Thursday, Panasonic announced its plans of launching its very first Blu-ray Disc player dubbed DMP-BD10, which will be a dear $1,300 USD. What’s more…Panasonic will also intro a matching receiver, the SA-XR700 and speaker system, the SB-TP1000, for home theater lovers.
The Blu-ray player, SA-XR700 receiver and SB-TP1000 speaker package will reach retail outlets in September, Panasonic said. The delay will give time for Blu-ray to launch itself in the marketplace. Sony’s new format is just starting to get out the door, with the first Blu-ray movies appearing on store shelves this week.
Rival format HD DVD has had a slight head start, hitting United States retail outlets in April with Toshiba’s $499 and $799 USD models. The company has not released sales figures, but only shipped 10,000 units for the release. An HD DVD recorder will make its debut in Japan next month for a cost of around $3,470 USD.
Still, consumers are not rushing out to upgrade to high-definition DVD for a number of reasons. The rival formats have fragmented the market, in other words many movies are only available for one platform. In addition, high costs mean the new players are only attractive to enthusiasts and early adopters.
Production delays are also affecting both formats, but most notably Blu-ray. Pioneer announced earlier this month that it is pushing back its BDP-HD1 Blu-ray Disc player from this summer into the fall. Likewise, Sony’s PlayStation 3 game console was delayed due to a decision to utilize a Blu-ray drive.
The cost of Blu-ray players will come down over time, according to Kazuhiro Tsuga, executive officer in charge of digital network and software technologies at Matsushita, which sells products under the Panasonic name in North America. The biggest problem when it comes to cost right now is the laser and the lenses. As volume manufacturing kicks in, prices will decline, Tsuga said.
“It would be considerably more expensive,” he said. A single drive that could play both types of discs would also be thicker, and as a result, unwieldy in notebook PCs.
“In Japan, Blu-ray is dominant,” he said. Sony and a few others actually released Blu-ray equipment in that country a few years ago, he said. (The companies behind Blu-ray also stand to earn royalties for the invention, other executives at Blu-ray companies have said.)
Only Samsung will have a Blu-ray player available this summer.
Though consumers have months of waiting ahead, Panasonic’s DMP-BD10 boasts impressive specifications. The player integrates a 296MHz, 14bit video D/A converter with 4x oversampling for 1080i/720p output. Panasonic says it can “theoretically reproduce up to nearly 4400 billion colors.”
Backward compatibility will also enable the DMP-BD10 to play standard DVDs and CDs. Older movies can be up-converted to 1080p.
Reid Sullivan, Vice President of Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company’s Entertainment Group said, “Panasonic is proud to be a leader in the development of cutting edge Blu-ray technology, which is the most significant technological advance in home entertainment since the arrival of the DVD almost a decade ago.”
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